For Whom The Bell Tolls

"Not so many as were shot afterwards or will be shot. The P.O.U.M. It is like the name. Not serious. They should have called it the M.U.M.P.S. or the M.E.A.S.L.E.S. But no. The Measles is much more dangerous. It can affect both sight and hearing. But they made one plot you know to kill me, to kill Walter, to kill Modesto and to kill Prieto. You see how badly mixed up they were? We are not at all alike. Poor P.O.U.M. They never did kill anybody. Not at the front nor anywhere else. A few in Barcelona, yes."

"Were you there?"

"Yes. I have sent a cable describing the wickedness of that infamous organization of Trotskyite murderers and their fascist machinations all beneath contempt but, between us, it is not very serious, the P.O.U.M. Nin was their only man. We had him but he escaped from our hands."

"Where is he now?"

"In Paris. We say he is in Paris. He was a very pleasant fellow but with bad political aberrations."

"But they were in communication with the fascists, weren't they?"

"Who is not?"

"We are not."

"Who knows? I hope we are not. You go often behind their lines," he grinned. "But the brother of one of the secretaries of the Republican Embassy at Paris made a trip to St. Jean de Luz last week to meet people from Burgos."

"I like it better at the front," Robert Jordan had said. "The closer to the front the better the people."

"How do you like it behind the fascist lines?"

"Very much. We have fine people there."

"Well, you see they must have their fine people behind our lines the same way. We find them and shoot them and they find ours and shoot them. When you are in their country you must always think of how many people they must send over to us."

"I have thought about them."

"Well," Karkov had said. "You have probably enough to think about for today, so drink that beer that is left in the pitcher and run along now because I have to go upstairs to see people. Upstairs people. Come again to see me soon."

Yes, Robert Jordan thought. You learned a lot at Gaylord's. Karkov had read the one and only book he had published. The book had not been a success. It was only two hundred pages long and he doubted if two thousand people had ever read it. He had put in it what he had discovered about Spain in ten years of travelling in it, on foot, in third-class carriages, by bus, on horse- and mule-back and in trucks. He knew the Basque country, Navarre, Aragon, Galicia, the two Castiles and Estremadura well. There had been such good books written by Borrow and Ford and the rest that he had been able to add very little. But Karkov said it was a good book.

"It is why I bother with you," he said. "I think you write absolutely truly and that is very rare. So I would like you to know some things."

All right. He would write a book when he got through with this. But only about the things he knew, truly, and about what he knew. But I will have to be a much better writer than I am now to handle them, he thought. The things he had come to know in this war were not so simple.

19

"What do you do sitting there?" Maria asked him. She was standing close beside him and he turned his head and smiled at her.

"Nothing," he said. "I have been thinking."

"What of? The bridge?"

"No. The bridge is terminated. Of thee and of a hotel in Madrid where I know some Russians, and of a book I will write some time."

"Are there many Russians in Madrid?"

"No. Very few."

"But in the fascist periodicals it says there are hundreds of thousands."

"Those are lies. There are very few."

"Do you like the Russians? The one who was here was a Russian."

"Did you like him?"

"Yes. I was sick then but I thought he was very beautiful and very brave."

"What nonsense, beautiful," Pilar said. "His nose was flat as my hand and he had cheekbones as wide as a sheep's buttocks."

"He was a good friend and comrade of mine," Robert Jordan said to Maria. "I cared for him very much."

"Sure," Pilar said. "But you shot him."

When she said this the card players looked up from the table and Pablo stared at Robert Jordan. Nobody said anything and then the gypsy, Rafael, asked, "Is it true, Roberto?"

"Yes," Robert Jordan said. He wished Pilar had not brought this up and he wished he had not told it at El Sordo's. "At his request. He was badly wounded."

"Que cosa mas rara," the gypsy said. "All the time he was with us he talked of such a possibility. I don't know how many times I have promised him to perform such an act. What a rare thing," he said again and shook his head.

"He was a very rare man," Primitivo said. "Very singular."

"Look," Andres, one of the brothers, said. "You who are Professor and all. Do you believe in the possibility of a man seeing ahead what is to happen to him?"